How to balance multiball games?

[DragonEater70]

I would like to run a multiball game at some point in the future, ane I'm wondering how it should be balanced numerically.
Like I know for singleball 10:3, 12:4 are considered more or less balanced. But would it be balanced to just add another scumteam without changing the town numbers? Like 10:3:3? I mean this will definitely lower town winrate but I think each individual scumteam will also have lower winrate so it's theoretically balanced?
Is there some established norm on this?

[Political Clout]

You also have to consider that in the 3 factions 2 scum factions can kill each other at night.

So in a fire and ice game a 13 player game 4 can be scum

2 ice 2 fire 9 townies

During the day the 2 scum factions can also hunt for each other.

[Political Clout]

https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?ti ... all_Setups

Here is a list of multi ball setups.

[the worst]

i'm not a balance wizard, so someone a bit more wise will be able to help more.just a couple of thoughts on designing/balancing multiball:

• how are you balancing for night kills? having multiple deaths from anti-town sources at night significantly increases a game's swing. couple of open examples on how these have been approached:
  jungle republic does this by having a (1) 3p mafia team without NKs or counters, but with an advantage due to high numbers & (2) a 2p werewolf team with nightkills, but with a town seer who can ID them & without that numerical advantage
  elemental large approached this by having, like, a scissor/paper/rock mechanic which will prevent NKs conditionally
  
  
  
• are you balancing for a 50% town / 50% anti-town winrate (i.e. 50/25/25, etc.) or are you balancing for an equal winrate (i.e. 33/33/33, etc.)?
  
  
  
• mith has done some ev calculations on vanilla multiball here, which may help a little with numbers.
  
  
  
• is there something about this game which will keep day play exciting? for example, just a phenomenon i've seen a lot: scum can more easily look like traditional townies, since there is a lot which they aren't informed about. this means multiball games often have vocal townies and vocal scum dancing around each other a lot, especially in early phases. it can be easy for other players to get drowned out. nightkills then often remove the louder voices which are motivated to solve, leaving behind people who feel fatigued from earlier in the game. is there anything in the setup which accounts for this type of fatigue?
  
  
  
• sadly or not, a lot of people don't enjoy multiball, especially in closed setups, or if there's a limited level of town power. just an example of a concept that curb this -- "everyone is a dayvig" style setups (e.g. EHOBANOHAR or echo bay grits SEO as examples).
  
  talking on echo bay grits seo for a sec: open information is like, everyone has a daykill, which draws folks in for the gimmick. hidden info is multiple scumteams, some players are bulletproof, some players are strongwilled.
  
  not saying multiball games need a gimmick to draw numbers. just, like, it's worth being wary that they are unpopular vs. singleball!

[DragonEater70]

[*]are you balancing for a 50% town / 50% anti-town winrate (i.e. 50/25/25, etc.) or are you balancing for an equal winrate (i.e. 33/33/33, etc.)?


[*]mith has done some ev calculations on vanilla multiball here, which may help a little with numbers.

1. That is a good question that I've been asking myself, and I think the answer sould be based on what will the players find most fun (which I have no idea). That's kind of why I asked in the first place, because I want to know if players are fine with a lowered town winrate if every faction has equal winrate or what.


2. Thanks I will check this out.

[DragonEater70]

So let me rephrase it as an open question for everyone:

Would you enjoy more a multiball where every faction has equal chance, or one where factions have proportional chance to their size?

[the worst]

i prefer setups which are balanced around equal winrates across all factions, if solo scum outperforms town/mafia but everyone had a chance, i'd rather have 90-95% of the playerlist lose to the quality play. personal opinion though.

this would make quite a cool poll actually

[Political Clout]

I prefer setups which are prima facie balanced and am not interested in wintates as they suffer from a small sample size so no actual determination can be made if the game is actually "balanced" and "fair" based on actual gameplay. If I see a setup and say to myself yeah I think I can win as scum or as town it should be fine. To me a setup would be have to run at least 100 times with a new playerlist every game to determine actual outcome.

[Ythan]

I think the ideal is for each faction to have an equal chance but also as sk or something I don't personally mind my chances being slimmer.

[Klick]

One of the things I really like about multiball is that it naturally balances itself out towards 33/33/33.

The reason for this is because there are variable interests. If one team is significantly ahead, there are two teams working to correct that. If one scumteam is in the lead, the town elimination should usually be aiming for someone in that team, and the other scumteam should usually be using their kill power to target them. If town is in the lead, both scumteams' kill power is going towards reducing town's advantage. It rounds itself out.

So if you create a multiball game that's balanced in favor of one team, the consequences are not as severe because the other powers can operate with that in mind and act accordingly.

Don't worry as much about initial balance and focus on making a fun playing experience. I personally would lean towards giving town the initial advantage, because towns do struggle a bit early on in multiball, and that will give the most players a more positive experience.

[DragonEater70]

Thanks, I think this makes a lot of sense!

[Thestatusquo]

I generally think that crosskills are a balancing mechanic and therefore multiball can and should have more scum in it than your average game.

[Thestatusquo]

I have also noticed in the course of running them that people will complain about their factions power level almost no matter what you do. In a 3 faction game I ran awhile back I think it was reasonably balanced with each side having roughly 25% chance of winning. However most people aren't used to having 25% chance of winning. Their faction will feel underpowered to them. They will complain.

I still think this is the right way to do things but in the moment people are going to be annoyed.

[TemporalLich]

I have also noticed in the course of running them that people will complain about their factions power level almost no matter what you do. In a 3 faction game I ran awhile back I think it was reasonably balanced with each side having roughly 25% chance of winning. However most people aren't used to having 25% chance of winning. Their faction will feel underpowered to them. They will complain.

I still think this is the right way to do things but in the moment people are going to be annoyed.

A 25% EV for three factions adds up to 75%, which while balanced has a non-negligible chance of a draw or complete loss. The game being multiball does have some expected endgames that are draws (1 mafia and 1 werewolf is a stalemate), but a 25% chance for no winners feels like there is too much of a chance for an unsatisfying endgame.

But yeah equal EVs are balanced, and you won't get 50% EV in a balanced multiball as you have more than two factions that can't win together.

[Thestatusquo]

I have also noticed in the course of running them that people will complain about their factions power level almost no matter what you do. In a 3 faction game I ran awhile back I think it was reasonably balanced with each side having roughly 25% chance of winning. However most people aren't used to having 25% chance of winning. Their faction will feel underpowered to them. They will complain.

I still think this is the right way to do things but in the moment people are going to be annoyed.

A 25% EV for three factions adds up to 75%, which while balanced has a non-negligible chance of a draw or complete loss. The game being multiball does have some expected endgames that are draws (1 mafia and 1 werewolf is a stalemate), but a 25% chance for no winners feels like there is too much of a chance for an unsatisfying endgame.

But yeah equal EVs are balanced, and you won't get 50% EV in a balanced multiball as you have more than two factions that can't win together.

3 non town factions.

[Thestatusquo]

I think you could have maybe assumed I know how to do basic math idk.

[TemporalLich]

3 non town factions.

Alrighty. I assumed that Town was a faction.

25% for Town and three non-town factions adds up to 100%, and yeah I consider that balanced.

I think you could have maybe assumed I know how to do basic math idk.

Sorry about that, I assumed that Town was a faction.

Having the EV be 50% for town and ~16.6% each for three scumteams would be extremely townsided

[Thestatusquo]

Yeah and I think that sometimes that's what town expects, but I don't think its right.

[Thestatusquo]

I think its ok to have somewhat unbalanced win% per faction, but not so drastically that the town wins the game half the time.

Like if you have like town wins 30% of the time each faction wins ~23% of the time that's probably fine.

[Thestatusquo]

Or like if you're working with a serial killer its usually pretty impossible to give them equal win chances.

[TemporalLich]

I think its ok to have somewhat unbalanced win% per faction, but not so drastically that the town wins the game half the time.

Like if you have like town wins 30% of the time each faction wins ~23% of the time that's probably fine.

yeah, balance is an ideal

slight imbalance is a very reasonable possibility and is likely not significant anyway

Or like if you're working with a serial killer its usually pretty impossible to give them equal win chances.

Yeah... SK is hard to balance as it would be balanced as an extreme version of unequal scum team sizes

That being said, Survivor is impossible to balance

[Zachrulez]

No matter how balanced something might seem in theory you still need to be ready for something like this to happen in practice.

The thing I don't really like about the idea of 10:3:3 is that the town could theoretically lose even with perfect play. I don't really like to say a setup is balanced if something like that is possible no matter how improbable it seems in theory.

[DragonEater70]

The thing I don't really like about the idea of 10:3:3 is that the town could theoretically lose even with perfect play. I don't really like to say a setup is balanced if something like that is possible no matter how improbable it seems in theory.

That is a good point, I feel players should have agency and I guess 2-3 town deaths every night might lose town the game even with perfect play.

So do you think for a 3:3 ratio of scum it would need to be something like 12:3:3? Or even 14:3:3? I mean mathematically 14:3:3 should definitely be fine but might be a bit townsided even (with PRs).

[Thestatusquo]

No matter how balanced something might seem in theory you still need to be ready for something like this to happen in practice.

The thing I don't really like about the idea of 10:3:3 is that the town could theoretically lose even with perfect play. I don't really like to say a setup is balanced if something like that is possible no matter how improbable it seems in theory.

Swing and balance are not the same thing

[Zachrulez]

The thing I don't really like about the idea of 10:3:3 is that the town could theoretically lose even with perfect play. I don't really like to say a setup is balanced if something like that is possible no matter how improbable it seems in theory.

That is a good point, I feel players should have agency and I guess 2-3 town deaths every night might lose town the game even with perfect play.

So do you think for a 3:3 ratio of scum it would need to be something like 12:3:3? Or even 14:3:3? I mean mathematically 14:3:3 should definitely be fine but might be a bit townsided even (with PRs).

I think town being able to win with perfect play is the absolute starting point for balance. Even 11 townies accomplishes that goal. I'm not sure how I feel about town being able to lose after only a few mistakes but in multiball I'm not sure how often that would happen vs everything in between. You're probably fine at 12 townies and I would have the exact number depend on what power you want to put in the game I suppose. Though one of the strange things about multiball is that you don't really need power for balance because scum vs scum actually does inherently balance a lot of the town disadvantage. Scum are as likely to wreck each other's games as they are town.

No matter how balanced something might seem in theory you still need to be ready for something like this to happen in practice.

The thing I don't really like about the idea of 10:3:3 is that the town could theoretically lose even with perfect play. I don't really like to say a setup is balanced if something like that is possible no matter how improbable it seems in theory.

Swing and balance are not the same thing

My post is probably poorly worded but it was meant to convey the dangers of swing.